Baltimore has a long and complex history with the presence of over 80 monuments in communities and courtyards throughout the city. Monuments are commanding artistic tributes to people and causes deemed worthy of value, respect, and endurance by those with influence. This has historically allowed people and organizations in positions of power to raise multiple monuments that support white supremacist or colonialist ideals. As the surface of monumental permanence has been cracked open in Baltimore through iconoclastic gestures and protest, the question now is: What should be done with the spaces left behind? Featuring work by artist Ọmọlará Williams Mcallister addressing the former Confederate Soldiers and Sailors Monument in Bolton Hill, the Billie Holiday Statue on Pennsylvania Ave, and the former Columbus Statue in Little Italy, BMonumental offers a challenge to Baltimore’s relationship with monuments and public space.

 

When we listen to what public monuments say about history, who is speaking? In the case of the Confederate Soldiers and Sailors Monument, erected in 1903 on Mount Royal Avenue, the answer is the Maryland Chapter of the Daughters of the Confederacy—an organization that promoted racist Lost Cause ideology and supported the Ku Klux Klan. When the Christopher Columbus Monument was dedicated in October of 1984, speakers at the podium included president Ronald Reagan, whose policies decimated the city of Baltimore, and Baltimore police chief Frank Battaglia, who initiated illegal warrantless searches and stop-and-frisk policies aimed at Black residents. The Billie Holiday Monument speaks a very different message, commemorating the legendary jazz singer who once lived in Baltimore—but artist James Earl Reid’s original plans for pedestal reliefs depicting lynchings were scrapped by the city. Believing he had been censored, the artist boycotted the 1985 dedication. Forty years passed before the panels were finally added.

 

These three monuments are addressed in conversation and contrast with one another as two empty pedestals-- one by way of city removal and one through being pulled down in an act of iconoclasm by demonstrators-- and a still-standing ode to a cherished figure with roots in Baltimore.  Through temporary installation, performance, and video, artist Ọmọlará Williams McCallister celebrates the memory of Billie Holiday and imagines ways to repurpose former contested monument sites. Poets, children, and other community members reflect and comment on the sites via online activities and ongoing public discussions. Together, all of these emotive and imaginative responses point towards a community-directed future for memory and public space in Baltimore.